


A Place Called Home

by 49Times



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, Alternate Universe- Cowboys, Fluff, M/M, Pining, photos included
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 18:02:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10882086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/49Times/pseuds/49Times
Summary: A Cowboy AU, in photographs and words.Poe is an outlaw and Finn is looking to escape his life as a deputy to a corrupt sheriff. Neither is expecting to find love when they find each other.





	A Place Called Home

**Author's Note:**

> I have a weakness for gay cowboys, so here is a thing I made. It was supposed to be mostly pictures and just for tumblr, but my feels took hold.

Poe Dameron.

Most notorious outlaw West of the Mississippi. Maybe East of it as well. He wouldn’t know. Never had much cause to go back that way.

It was unsurprising, given his parentage. Ma’s brains and pa’s shooting were the two gifts they’d left him before they passed, and they’d served him well all his life.

He’d been more or less on his own ever since. He partnered up when it suited him, but extending trust too far had taught him lessons early on he wasn’t likely to forget, and once he cleared adolescence he made it policy never to let anyone get too close.

He was a rogue of the West, and spent his days creating headaches and causing trouble for the men he deemed unfit to lead, relieving them of goods and wealth he didn't think they deserved. He spent his days helping folk who needed it- and helping himself when he needed it- and always staying one step ahead of the law. 

He never expected one day he’d be in desperate need of help from someone _else._

And he most _definitely_ never expected that help to come from a deputy of the most corrupt sheriff the West had ever seen.

Poe had a tendency to walk into every town like he owned the place. It didn’t always serve him well, but who didn’t love a good bar brawl now and then? Got the juices flowin’. Made a man feel alive.

Still, he was forced to admit it _may_ have been a poor move, heading into the township of Sheriff Ren with an excess of swagger and a defect of fear… especially given their history, and how much of a rotten pissant the man was.

Sure enough, he’d only just finished his first whiskey and started scoping about for the right kind of gamblers to swindle out of their gold (trying to be too intrigued by that guy in the corner by himself, drinking quietly with his head down and what look’s like the weight of the world on his shoulders), when the cavalry arrived, a veritable storm of bounty hunters, deputies and average folk wanting a piece of the prize. They clutched wanted posters and pistols in their fists and dollar signs in their eyes.

Goddamn.

He gave them a run for their money. At least he liked to tell himself as much when he thought back on it years later, but the men he’d rode into town with proved yellow as soon as the first wave of hunters came into the saloon. Turned tail faster than a beat dog.

Not surprising.

Poe had a knack for getting himself out of dicey situations, usually through the use of his considerable wit, charm and his blessedly dashing looks. Sadly, it seemed talking his way out of this one wasn’t going to work for once. Sheriff Ren had lost a whole lot of good money on account of Poe, and he was not the forgiving type.

Poe's luck, it seemed, had finally caught up with him.

___

He was set to be hanged at high noon, but the noose never touched his neck.

Not, sadly, due to any ingenious plan of his own, but by the mercy of a complete stranger.

The most courageous and hopelessly naive man he’d ever come across in his life or probably ever would again.

His goddamn hero.

Finn.

They escaped by the skin of their teeth and headed into the wilds. Poe was pretty banged up, courtesy of Sheriff Kylo Ren and his lackeys, but there was air in his lungs and blood still pumped in his veins, and for that he was infinitely grateful. He also had a certain amount of gratitude for the gentleness of the courageous stranger’s hands, and the way he doctored Poe’s wounds with such patience and care, never once commenting if Poe winced or cried out in pain.

He tried not to dwell on that bit, and managed for the most part.

The Sheriff, it seemed, was not a man to be trifled with. For Poe to have crossed him not once but twice and still be breathing was already more than he could handle. That he’d managed to escape through betrayal by one of his own deputies was more than he could bear.

He pursued them relentlessly.

With such enormous targets on their backs, it only made sense to stick together, to watch one another's until the danger passed.

 _Just for a while_ , Poe told himself.

‘Til they got far enough away Ren would give up, if that ever happened.

In the mean time, Finn was doing this really unsettling thing where he was acting like _a good man_ and it was doing a number on Poe's carefully constructed walls. He had determined long before meeting Finn that that such men didn’t exist, or were few and far between. He tried not to like him overmuch, but you can't be around that kind of relentless earnestness and not be affected by it. 

In a thousand little ways, without even knowing it Finn seemed dead set on shaking him up and proving his closely held beliefs wrong.

He did it again and again, and Poe was powerless to stop it. He did it with his easy laugh, or the way it just seemed so easy for him to dole out kindness. In the way he tended to horses, always chattering away to them as he did, calling them pretty when they were good and chastising them when they weren’t. In the way he always offered up peppermint or licorice when he got a stash in town, or the way his eyes sparkled with enjoyment when he and Poe argued about the merits (or lack thereof) of licorice, or whatever silly thing they picked to fill up the quiet.

He didn’t even make it a week before he started thinking of Finn as the best damn friend he’d ever had.

It had been over a year since Finn cut him down from the gallows and out of the jaws of death.

Ren stopped chasing them, or at least lost their trail, but they never did manage to part ways. At this point, Poe was certain the only way Finn would ever get rid of him would be if he decided to pump him full of bullets and leave him for dead.

Dammit, even if he did that (not that Poe could even imagine it), Poe was sure he’d crawl across the entire fucking desert just to look him in the eyes and ask him _why._

Finn wasn’t just his friend any more.

He wanted him to be, desperately but more than half a year ago, things had started to get twisted up in Poe’s head and he couldn’t untangle them. Maybe longer ago than that. 

He tried not to think about it, and by day they were usually too busy outrunning and outgunning trouble for him to fret about it. But by night, the yearning had started to creep in, and it was all Finn's goddamn fault. 

Finn was too goddamn _soft_.

It was impossible not to think about him in the kinda way a man shouldn’t think about another. His eyes were kind and his laugh was easy, and Poe spent so much time just trying to avert his gaze, to push down the longing so he wouldn’t act like a damn fool and scare off the best thing that ever happened to him. Because that’s what Finn was.

The kind of man who’d take a bullet for you without a second thought. The kind of man you could tell things to, things Poe never thought he’d say out loud to anyone. Things about his parents, or the things Poe did to survive in the first few years after their passing. Things he never wanted to say, things he never thought he _could_ , seemed to just come out of him when he looked at chocolate colored eyes gleaming in the firelight, sensitive and patient. 

Stopping the thing inside him is impossible, Poe knew that. Poe didn't think anyone who lived a life in such shadow could come into contact with the light that was Finn and not come ti love him with every last bit of themselves. 

Stopping such feelings was more than impossible, but controlling them wasn't. At nights, he laid awake and thought about what Finn's strong arms would feel like around him, what those beautiful hands would feel like on his body, but by days he smiled at him but never for too long. 

And then one night at their campfire, when the ache had gotten so bad that Poe thought he might just get on his horse and ride away and never look back, Finn simply leaned over and pressed his lips against Poe’s. It was gentle and his lips were soft, and it lasted only seconds before he pulled back and fixed Poe with a stare that was equal parts heated and terrified.

Poe's heart nearly stopped and his brain worked overtime trying to catch up on what had just happened, that brief, beautiful and entirely unexpected thing. 

They’d run outta whiskey two nights before, so there was no way he could blame it on…

 _So that meant…did Finn_ **_want...?_**

“If I crossed a line, and you wanna take a swing at me, I understand,” Finn said, eyes downcast but still reflecting firelight. “Though I’d take it as kindness if you didn’t,” he mumbled, and something inside Poe exploded, because how could Finn not know, how could he not know that he was _everything_? From the minute he cut him down from the gallows, and every minute after.

 _Then show him,_ growled an impatient voice in his head, and he finally had the sense to take Finn by the jaw and return his kiss hard enough to hurt.

And that was it.

The end of the longing, the beginning of a life he never knew he wanted.

\---

They got by on skirting the law for another couple of years. Finn, in spite of his charming naivety, proved useful in a fight and could usually be trusted to help carry out a scheme of Poe’s without difficulty.

They kept it up, toeing the lines of right and wrong to get by, but once they realized the extent of the thing between them, they knew it was time to stop running and start living.

So that’s what they do.

They find themselves a nice-sized plot with the money they’ve taken from them who never deserved it, in a place where no one they’ve crossed will be likely to find them.

It’s not much, really, the life they have. No one else would ever find it particularly grand or exciting. The men he’d known in his glory days, the men he’d fought with, _killed_ with…they’d laugh in his face to see him now. And maybe try to stick a knife in him for being so wrong.

Poe doesn’t care. He has Finn now, Finn who is the best man he’s ever known, maybe the best man who ever lived. He has Finn however he wants, whenever he wants and Finn has him back.

In the bed they share, on the rug in front of the wood stove. In the grassy field under the summer sun, or when they crawl out of the creek after a swim, shivering and nude and in need of the best kind of warmth. After they bicker over whether or not raising chickens is worth the effort, after Finn shows him how to make a cobbler. 

No matter where it is, no matter what leads to it, from the first time as young, men embarking on something alien and terrifying, to the very last, when they’re both gray and more than a little achey, every single time, it’s _home._

**Author's Note:**

> Well there it is. Fluffy as hell, but I guess I never did get over the way things turned out in Brokeback Mountain...
> 
> Hope it was enjoyable! Feedback is love!


End file.
